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republican budget

On June 20, Nuns on the Bus reached Rep. Paul Ryan's Wisconsin office. Nuns on the Bus, a cross-country bus tour of sisters sponsored by NETWORK, hopes to protest the House Republican budget that drastically cuts safety net programs and disproportionately targets the poor. Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, spoke outside of Ryan's office in Janesville, Wis., following a meeting with his staff.

When the Nuns on the Bus pulled up in front of Rep. Paul Ryan’s home office in Janesville, Wis., earlier this week, they were challenging the theological rationale he has been using for his budget plan that has become the economic banner for the Republican Party.

But they were also showing how people can hold strong opinions, get those opinions into the public arena and still engage adversaries in respectful ways.

In the process, they called on citizens to get engaged in the same way.

“I urge you, urge you, I beg you, Janesville, in this election cycle, please, don’t be a spectator,” Sr. Simone Campbell pleaded with a crowd in the courthouse park as their visit to the southern Wisconsin city came to an end.

“Simply put, this budget is morally indefensible and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation and a commitment to the common good,” the statement reads. “A budget that turns its back on the hungry, the elderly and the sick while giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest few can’t be justified in Christian terms.”

John Gehring, Catholic Outreach Coordinator at Faith in Public Life, believes Ryan’s beliefs are skewed.

“This budget turns centuries of Catholic social teaching on its head,” Gehring said in a news release. “These Catholic leaders and many Catholics in the pews are tired of faith being misused to bless an immoral agenda.”

In a lunchtime speech today before hundreds of reporters and editors attending the annual meeting of the Associated Press, President Obama launched an attack on the House Republican budget passed last week.

“Disguised as a deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism,” Mr. Obama said. “By gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training, research and development — it’s a prescription for decline.”

The House budget would do the reverse of what the country needs. It cuts taxes on the wealthiest, increases military spending, and drastically reduces domestic programs, especially those serving the neediest. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said, “It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation's history)."